Sensor fusion
Combining data from several sensors so the result is more accurate, complete or reliable than any single sensor could provide on its own.
Sensor fusion merges measurements that have different strengths and failure modes. The classic example is an IMU: an accelerometer is noisy but drift-free, a gyroscope is smooth but drifts, and fusing them with a filter yields a stable orientation. Fusion also spans sensor types, such as combining a camera with radar in a vehicle, or temperature and humidity with a door contact to infer whether a cold room was left open.
In IoT, fusion can happen on the device, on a gateway or in the cloud, and moving it closer to the sensors reduces the data that needs to be sent. The cost is complexity: sensors must be time-synchronized and calibrated, and a fused output can hide which input is at fault when something goes wrong.
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